While the Queer column has been left wanting for pretty much the entire year, last week’s column was, in particular, a judgmental and ambiguous mess.
You can be flamboyant. You can have brightly dyed hair, a camp voice, the works—and as long as you’re happy with yourself, cool. That’s you. Myself and many more wouldn’t even think twice about judging you negatively for it.
It’s unfortunate to read that our UniQ co-president, and our sole outward representative in Salient (and thus, to the wider student population), is being judgmental towards constituents in the ‘queer community’. Now I’m all for celebrating the diversity of this community. Our variation is one of our biggest strengths; I would’ve thought you’d agree with me there. This is the 21st century after all. We’re all our own people. But the latest column seems opposed to this.
There shouldn’t have to be a choice between being an: a) an apparently self-loathing, self-denying, internally homophobic queer; or b) flamboyant, ‘true to themselves’, balls-to-the-wall for queer rights, queer—a binary you seem to express as inevitable, despite your scapegoat “straight-acting” post-script. It is important to recognise that if someone isn’t overtly flamboyant by nature, it does not mean they’re disrespecting those predecessors who fought in the Stonewall riots, and they’re not making subtle digs at Ellen or Elton. That’s a ridiculous assertion to make.
It seems nothing but counter-productive to reconstruct that binary of ‘us gays vs. them straights’ in sexuality politics today. Don’t be so quick to pass off everything and everyone that isn’t flamboyantly gay as hetero-normative, patriarchal, and not worth your time. It’s a personal preference and natural instinct of some people, not a personal attack, to choose to embrace their sexuality through means other than conforming to stereotypical social constructs. So what?
Anyway, open your eyes and you will probably find that there are awesome straight, white, middle-class guys who walk around Lambton every day. You’ll find these people who are perfectly accepting (and even embracing) of flamboyancy, repressed flamboyancy, or those seemingly novelty “straight actors” who, incidentally, prefer to sleep with men.
There’s room for everything in the queer community. At least, there should be! Everything except ‘gatekeepers’: those who create unnecessary divides and barriers inside the queer community, when it needs to be united. These gatekeepers suck (and not in a good way), especially when they’re in positions of influence. Sure, we’re a mixed bunch. That’s why we love us, isn’t it?